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The Asus V8420 Deluxe is a
bit of a paradox at first glance. It could be assumed that this is
a budget package. After all, it does contain a card built
on the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4200 chipset, technically the
"low man on the totem pole" of the three cards in the GF4 Titanium series. A
closer examination reveals that Asus didn't just give you
any board based on the Ti 4200 but a faster and more
powerful version than most competitors.
Then they threw together a bundle unmatched by most other
companies. You want games? How about two full versions of
popular titles, plus another CD with 6 demos. What about
output options? Asus includes a breakout box for video in
and out that could be used for connection to a television and a splitter cable to use the
DVI port for a second VGA monitor. As if all this
wasn't enough, you also get a set of stereoscopic glasses
to make your gaming experience complete.
Have we gotten
your attention yet? We bet Asus did, so let's check
out the nitty-gritty details and see if the actual product
lives up to the feature bullet list.
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Specifications and Features of the Asus V8420
Deluxe GF4 Ti4200 |
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The gold at the end of the rainbow |
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW.
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Asus V8420 Deluxe
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260MHz
GeForce 4 Ti GPU
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15-pin VGA, S-Video In/Out, DVI-I
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256-bit Graphics Architecture
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AGP Interface ? 4x/2x support
NVIDIA nfiniteFX II Engine:
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Dual
programmable Vertex Shaders, fast Pixel Shaders and
3D textures give developers the freedom to program a
virtually infinite number of custom special effects
never seen before and gives you the power to play
true-to-life characters in hyper-realistic
environments.
Lightspeed Memory Architecture II:
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With 128-bit DDR Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
provides nearly double the memory bandwidth of
GeForce3.
Accuview Antialiasing Engine:
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High-performance and stunning visual quality at high
frame rates.
Output Jacks:
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Standard 15-pin VGA
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S-video jack -
allows
you to play on any size TV in your house with an
s-video connector.
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DVI-I port
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Input jack for stereoscopic glasses
Cooling solution:
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On-board active heat-sink cooling fan
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Specifications:
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Controller: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
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Memory 128MB 3.3ns
Etrontech
DDR
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Core Clock 260MHz
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Memory Clock 550MHz
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350MHz internal RAMDAC
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API Support Direct-X, Open GL ICD for Windows
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Connectors VGA, DVI, S-Video In/Out
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4
Billion Texels/sec Fill Rate
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113 Million Vertices/sec
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8
GB/sec memory bandwidth
Features at a Glance:
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AGP 4x compatible with fast writes
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256-bit 3D and 2D graphics accelerator
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NVIDIA nView display technologies
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Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
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Accuview Antialiasing
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High Definition Video Processing Engine
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TV
Out connector
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DVI connector
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Stereoscopic glasses for 3D gaming
Package Contents:
- Asus V8420 GeForce 4
Ti 4200 video adapter
- Stereoscopic 3D
Glasses
- "Breakout" box with
video in/out options
- DVI to DVI and VGA
splitter cable
- Aquanox and Midnight
GT/Rage Rally CDs
- Demo CD with 6 games
- Driver & Utilities
CD, Asus DVD 2000, Intervideo WinCoder, CyberLink
VideoLive Mail
- Manual
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OK, I mentioned that this
wasn't your run-of-the-mill GF4 Ti 4200. Let me explain.
To begin with, the Core clock is set to 260MHz by default, 10MHz over the
usual 250 that we have seen with other Ti 4200s. Next,
instead of including 64MB of DDR memory, or even 128MB of
"slower" RAM, they placed 128MB of 3.3ns
Etrontech
BGA DDR! All of this was placed on a 8-layer purple PCB
board that looks exactly like its big brothers, the 4400
and 4600. In fact, to the naked eye, one would be hard
pressed to find a difference, as the layout is exactly the
same. The snazzy looking gold-anodized heatsink with clear
blades was a nice contrast from the purple PCB, and was
attached to the card with two clips and what looked to be
a perfect application of thermal paste.
As one can expect, on the bracket we found the usual kinds
of ports, one for a VGA monitor, an S-Video connection, as
well as DVI. There is another input however, that is used for the
Stereoscopic 3D glasses, which are included in the
package. To use these glasses, one must use the
Asus enhanced 29.42 drivers found on the driver CD.
I
guess that means that if you want to keep using these
glasses, you would have to wait for Asus to update their
video drivers rather than using the more frequent releases
found on NVIDIA's site. NVIDIA does offer reference 3D
Stereo drivers on their website, but we did not test them
in this review.
For the sake of testing, we
installed the 29.42s from the CD, and then launched Aquanox, which is included in the package.
I really must
admit that the 3D glasses do enhance the 3D "feel" of the game,
although I could only stand playing with them on for
shorts periods of time. We also watched one of the Comanche
4 demos with these glasses, but did not get the same 3D
effect I felt in Aquanox. There are tweaks to be mastered
in the settings for these glasses, but for now I was
satisfied.
Setup and
Screen Shots
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